Saturday, October 27, 2012

Last night I went to a haunted trail with a few others from my church. At first I was terrified. And by "at first" I mean before we even pulled out of the parking lot to make the one hour trek to the trail.

I was questioning why I was even going to the trail. I'm the one that has to stay the night at someone's house after watching a scary movie, and I am the one that after hearing a scary story typically can't sleep for the next several nights.

As we were driving over to the park, my friends kept telling me "It won't be that bad. Just relax." So I did my best. We picked up our tickets and then started toward the trail. The sounds of the undead were coming from the woods. At this point I was pretty calm. My friends, they were starting to get worried.

We started the 35 minute hike through the woods with ten houses to go through. It soon hit me, in order for me to overcome my fear of this place, I had to stare down what was scary. I ended up being the "brave" one of the four of us. Yeah, there was some pretty scary things out there. But when you remember there are rules, such as they are not allowed to touch you, it makes it easier.

Even if there weren't the rules, what were we going to do? If something started to happen, we would need to get out. We couldn't stand waiting. We would need to have sense enough to know what to do.

What I'm trying to say is the world is scary. There's a lot of uncertainty. That is my biggest thing, not knowing what is going to happen. Even though the world is scary, we need to look our fear in the face. We'll likely see the what the fear really is. Most likely, it's not that scary. It could just be another person with face-paint and a bad costume.

The next time something seems scary, standup and look it in the face. Chances are, you'll win.